THE GOLDEN PRINCE

Age Range: 3 - 6

This prince’s day as related in simple words and images will prompt requests for still more reads.

The “Brave Knight known as the Golden Prince” is preschool age, and he sports a shield with a duck on it, a play sword, a helmet and a cloak that may have started life as a bath towel. The pictures expand the story elegantly: The prince’s “Big Castle at the top of a Very High Mountain” is depicted as a quite nice house on a hill, for instance. The wild beast he hunts is the family cat, and he rescues his damsel older sister from her computer by the simple expedient of rolling her desk chair away (with her in it). At bedtime, the prince is scrubbed completely and put to bed with a magic kiss from the queen. The images, bright and clear, are punctuated by changes in attitude of the duck on the prince’s shield and the family cat in various modes of play or discomfiture. The charm of this little volume can hardly be overstated. It is what so many picture books for the very young strive to be, escaping both simpering sentimentality and shrill instruction.

Straightforward and sweet—almost darling, but in a very good way. If only it were available in hardcover. (Picture book. 3-6)